Drying Mushrooms

I bought my dehydrator and it arrived last week. I settled on the Nesco Square dehydrator and bought the maximum number of trays. So far I have done another big batch of little tomatoes. And some mushrooms. My home grown mushrooms still aren't doing so well, am still working on reviving them. So when I had the opportunity to buy 3 pounds of local organic shitaake mushrooms I took it. Here are some pictures of them drying process, I used all 8 drying trays and filled up to the top 2 small freezer bags. I also kept a bunch fresh to put on a pizza later in the week. I definitely want to try to do a cream of mushroom soup sometime when it gets a bit colder.

Mushroom Harvest

Our mushrooms are ready already! It's been less than 2 weeks since we got them! They only took a few days to sprout and then they went pretty quickly. Except I bought a dehumidifier to run in the basement yesterday and they are not too happy about that, have started being a bit dry around the edges. The laundry room really smells like mushrooms, not in a good way.


Today we had them in a pasta with a basil and sun dried tomato pesto sause. We used sun dried tomatoes and basil from the garden. It was good, the oyster mushrooms had a lot of flavour. And yesterday we had a mushroom gravy that was also good. So far we've harvested one bunch, there are 2 more to go. And then they're supposed to grow at least 2 more times.

Oyster Mushrooms

I received my oyster mushroom growing kit in the mail today. It is just a bag of sawdust and spores I guess. I keep it indoors in a cool room where it gets indirect light. I've put it in the basement next to a window, even right by the window I think it counts as only indirect light and I hope it is enough. I meant to buy some oyster mushrooms from the grocery store before we bought this to make sure we liked them but never got round to it and I was too excited to keep waiting. I'm sure we will like them. I just have to try to remember to mist it twice a day. We got it from this company, we'll see how many mushrooms it gives us but it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
http://www.wyliemycologicals.ca/kits.php

Leftover Porcini Mushrooms

Today I used the porcini mushrooms the were left over from Valentine's to make a creamy pasta. The only porcini mushroom dish we had had before was a creamy pasta that Kevin's mom made a few times and we loved. So I was hoping it would turn out like that. I think it did. Kevin and I both agreed it was really really good. I've made a bunch of different recipes for vegan creamy pasta and I've always liked them but Kevin never has - so finding one he likees is a kind of big deal. I read through a bunch of recipes and tried to pick one that wasn't too nutrional yeast-y (because Kevin wouldn't like that) and not too tofu-y (because Kevin wouldn't like that) and this one was good. I did add a teaspoon of nutritional yeast in the end just because I think nutritional yeast is good in cheese-like recipes even if Kevin doesn't think so.

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=14166.0